The Settlers' League War of Eighteen Sixty Two
Near Healdsburg, California
The pretty plaza you see today was once a staging ground for a small war. When Captain Henry Fitch died, his roughly forty nine thousand acre Rancho Sotoyome passed to his widow, Josefa Carrillo Fitch, and to his heirs, including his daughter Josephine and her husband John Bailhache. But by then dozens of American settlers had already built farms on the grant, convinced the Mexican title would never hold.
The federal land courts ruled otherwise, confirming the Fitch family as the legal owners. The squatters refused to leave. They organized a Settlers' League and, before the sheriff could serve eviction papers, they paraded through Healdsburg with music and banners, then confronted John Bailhache and forced him to flee.
The sheriff assembled a posse of roughly two hundred fifty men and rode in, only to be met by an armed force of equal size, with more men hidden in the woods. Outgunned, he retreated and called for the state militia. In the end the widow hired a Mexican American War veteran, Captain Lewis Norton, to clear the land.
During one removal, two shots rang out from a squatter hiding in the brush. One of Bailhache's workers was gravely wounded and died soon after. Norton then burned the disputed cabins to ash.
The land dispute was settled by fire, and by one man's death.
